Messages

31

Support / Re: Pivot Point Rotation 2.0

« on: June 12, 2013, 08:10:12 pm »

If you have 8 "Races" all with custom textures for hair, eyes, skin color... then custom armor that fits each race, and then universal weapons that fit everyone by changing the positioning on the character GameObject, is it more proper to use an atlas per Race at that point to avoid weird draw problems per character? 

If it's per race then that's 2 DCs per character on screen that is a different race than another... 1 for the race and wearable items and 1 for the weapons.  The worst case scenario would be all 9 races on the screen at once resulting in 18 DCs (this is targeting mobile).

If tk2d has zero problems supporting multiple alpha textures stacked on top of each other in a specific Z depth then shouldn't I instead pack all weapons into 1 atlas, all armor in another, and all character data in a third? That would be a max of 3 DCs (more texture memory loaded possibly).

- Character animations and images -> skin color/hair/eyes -> armors -> weapon so 4 DCs per character but if all the characters and animations are in 1 atlas and all customizations are in 1 atlas, all armor etc then it's 4 DCs MAX vs 18.  4 Reduced 16bit 2048 atlases are only 16mb of texture memory so option 2 seems better along as unity and tk2d have no issues doing all this layering from different atlases without any issues.

Sorry if this is design questioning... hopefully it's specific to how unity interacts with tk2d and avoiding any unforseen issues using 2D art stacked on each other.

32

Support / Re: Graphic anomalies at different resolutions

« on: June 12, 2013, 07:54:39 pm »

How am I downsampling the images?  The backgrounds are done in 192x108 for a nice 16:9 effect and all the characters are done in a 40x40 canvas which fits this "world" size of 192x108.  If I set the Character atlas to target size 108 and ortho size 10 and the backgrounds to the same, then everything comes out to scale exactly as the artist intended.  Am I doing something incorrect?

I think our art workflow is off....
Should all imported images always be a PoT texture?  Our world background is 192x108 for 16:9 and our little sprite guys are 40x40 because that's all the space we needed.  I  changes my target height to 80 and all the texture problems seem to have disappeared, but this doesn't seem like a logical workflow because an image being placed into tk2d sprite collection could be a number of completely different sizes like 20x10, 10x40, 100x100.. who knows, so I'm not understanding how you're supposed to create your art compared to the tk2d sprite collection settings.

Adding a 1px padding around everything "seems" to solve the issue, but I'd like to know how to actually do this correctly.. our last game never encountered this problem and I designed it with ortho size 1, target height 720 and all the images were 100x100.  Works on all resolutions with no padding etc so not sure what's different here.

33

Support / Graphic anomalies at different resolutions

« on: June 12, 2013, 04:29:27 am »

I'm seeing what looks like a strip of black pixels across the very top of my images and odd lines here and there when doing animations as the spites flip in and out.

I've tried literally every combination of settings I can think of but nothing works universally.

What I have is 40x40 pixel art characters that load right into a tk2d sprite collection.  I have the target height set to 126, tried 128... same results but at different resolutions.  I've tried uncompressed, trim alpha on, off, reduced 16 bit... but no matter what settings I use depending on the device resolution I'm seeing extra lines drawn inside my sprite images.  The web build I have seems to look perfect if i export to 1024x768 but if I try something like 1280x720 all a sudden I get the lines.

This is really putting a kink in our plans for a pixel art game so any help is appreciated.  I created our previous game which had 100x100 images and had zero problems, so I don't know if it's because the target height is so small or what the problem is...

Edit: To confuse matters more I've removed all sprites from the scene so that there are none overlapping or anything else that might be causing issues.  The black line of pixels or odd vertical ones, etc appear based on a combination of res and position on screen.  Example is I can set up 4 characters with the same sprite on the screen with target size 128 and maybe only 2 will have the weird line of pixels, but if I move them all then all might have it or none.  If I then change the resolution of the build or build to my iOS device the same occurs... 1-4 may have the weird issue depending on screen position etc.

Edit edit: Adding manual padding of 1 to my character sprites seems to resolve the issue, any explination for that?

Edit edit edit: The artist didn't put 1px empty space around the sprites.... I'm going to assume this is best practice and is what caused the entire 4 hour headache.  Can you please confirm?  I'm going to have him move all the art away from the edges of the image if so.

34

Support / Re: Pivot Point Rotation 2.0

« on: June 11, 2013, 08:11:36 pm »

There will be an attach point system in 2.1 which could work quite well for this. More details here:
https://trello.com/b/UfqlXqXy

Even with this system, it seems my workflow needs to be to have all images made exactly the same with my artist making the "bind point" of all artwork be in the dead center of the image.. that or set a custom anchor on every single image itself in tk2d.  The former method seems a lot easier, but that's a lot of hassle having to create artwork not "equipped" to the model which I understand.. but can be worked around by creating a separate layer with a human head on it in the middle of the screen while working on helmets, etc....

I guess the question is... what's the correct way to use the toolkit if I have 100 helmets, 100 shirts, etc.  Right now it's export in PS at full 40x40, put child GO's on my sprites for equipment points, manually set a weapon in the scene and record the vector3 position of what looks right and for that Race like Ogre, Human, Halfling etc set the "mainhand" vector3 and know to move the sprite to that location.  If I did a custom anchor on every single image then all I would have to do is set the sprite.position to the mainhand.position of each Race, but that is a lot more overhead when importing all 500+ images into the game.

Another workflow is to make a sprite collection per equipment slot but that's a draw call each if i do that, resulting in like 10 DCs just for players and this is targeting mobile.  I only suggest that because I notice you can shift click all and set bind points for the entire sprite collection instantly like that (great feature).

35

Support / Re: Pivot Point Rotation 2.0

« on: June 11, 2013, 08:04:39 pm »

That sounds like a really interesting feature and I'll definitely take a look once it's live.

I was having really weird issues on iOS with small texture "flashing" odd anomalies at times with trimming on so I disabled it.  All our art is 40x40 pixel area images imported into a tk2d sprite collection with ortho target 10 and target height 126.  Clamp, uncompressed point texture settings.  When we checked disable trimming the anomalies went away.  It seems to be resolution dependant on mobile.. looked 100% fine on iPhone5 but had issues on my iPad retina and unity web builds (worst offender).

Compression on pixelart also results in crazy looking problems.. so all atlases have to remain uncompressed.

36

Support / Re: Pivot Point Rotation 2.0

« on: June 11, 2013, 03:46:21 am »

What would you suggest for a universal equip system for 2.0? Can you set the anchor in code? All my weapons will have the exact same X/Y pivot of 28/33 and I don't see any way to modify the anchor in code or do a batch import (that would be awesome to specify anchor at import time of 500 images).

To get around this I'm suggesting my artist create all weapons directly in the center of the 32x32 image with the weapon "grip point" the same so that I can make each race in our game have a child object for "Hand" and then just move the sprite Go to that location.  Does this sound logical?  It would also solve the rotation issue.

I feel I'm maybe not using the kit to its potential... untrimmed images is a complete waste of transparency space and I have to tell each atlas not to trim so that I can overlay images onto each other.  If my artist makes a character, pants, helmet, etc all in a 32x32 area then I just render different Z depth to "equip" them by laying every 32x32 image on top of each other.  Animations and everything else get completed messed up if you export trimmed images in photoshop, so is this normal to use full size images for pixel art like this?

37

Support / Pivot Point Rotation 2.0

« on: June 09, 2013, 09:48:54 pm »

Is there no longer a custom pivot point available in 2.0? I'm not seeing it in the sprite collection editor (but not really what I want anyway)

What I have is a bunch of weapons where the handle is in the exact same point in the image for each, so I need to (preferably in code and not all 500+ sprites) rotate around a specific point in the image so the weapon does an attack type motion.

I thought there was a way to child the sprite to a GO and just rotate it that way but I'm not able to see the way to do it.

38

Support / Re: Poll 1 - Experience level

« on: June 04, 2013, 02:58:43 pm »

I'm betting people buy this with unity looking for a 2d platformer solution so having a scene with how to control a player with a few animations, a rigidbody, and transitioning between states would make this tool even more popular. It's so incredibly hard to find a good RB platformer example that actually works well.

39

Support / Possible to create equip system?

« on: June 04, 2013, 02:55:01 pm »

Does tk2d support anything that would allow a full equipment system to overlay an animated sprite with simple z depth changes?

Thought is...
- have a sprite with empty hands and set a vector 3 for mount position of weapon in hand per frame and have the weapons all have the same canvas size and "grip" spot.. Not sure if you can make a parented game object a vector3 on the weapons and just match that to a mount position on the player that specifies a mount position.
- also do this for helms, chest pieces, and boots

This will be pixel art so smooth moves is no good really for everything involved even though we own it. Is there anything you can think of in tk2d that would assist with this? On frame change the vector3 would need t be changed to match the hand position in the frame. Helms should be easier if we don't move the head but boots etc will be tougher.

The other hurdle is setting pivot points of the weapon if that's possible so that rotating them does so around a specific point to match the players hand.

If there's an easier way to go about all of this I'm all ears